Teachers' Understandings of Writing Instruction for Included Students With Disabilities: It's a Beautiful Struggle

• In Event: 28.085 - English Language Arts and Literacy in Special Education: Strategies and Struggles

Abstract

Teachers’ understandings of writing instruction for students with disabilities who are included in general education classes influenced the quality of instruction provided in 9th and 10th grade general education Language Arts classes. Qualitative methods were used. Teachers’ understandings included deep and integrated knowledge of content and pedagogy that enabled them to facilitate the progress of students with disabilities, as well as firm beliefs that (a) students with disabilities could make progress and (b) learning writing was vitally important. The results add to Dyson and Freedman’s (1991) conceptual framework that calls for the unification of the previously separated social and cognitive lines of research in writing instruction and extend Shulman’s (1986) conception of pedagogical content knowledge to also include teacher beliefs.

Author

• Mary Theresa Kiely, Queens College - CUNY